Twitter as Presence
Twice, on two different occasions yesterday, I used Twitter to see why someone hadn’t responded to an email. I didn’t send them a message via that channel (because that just seems obnoxious). Instead, I checked into their Twitter stream to see what they’d been up to throughout the day. In one case, the person was at a conference. In the other, I wasn’t sure, but the person hadn’t sent a message in hours, so he or she was clearly offline for a little duration of time.
Twitter is a lot more than talking about your cat. It can do a lot more things than we’re currently doing with it. It’s not the end-all of the universe, but there’s more here for business users than meets the eye. And I know three ways I’d implement this at a mid-sized or enterprise-level corporation that would be immediately useful from a process improvement, reduced costs, and instant ROI point of view.
How else are you using Twitter?
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Comments
My primary two uses for it at this point are to learn things (businessy things), and to connect with the knit-folk in another way.
I’ve used it the way you described though, checking on someone who has gone silent to see if it is just me they aren’t talking to.
I’ve gradually started to get quite “addicted” to Twitter as an easy way of connecting with people, and have started to use it as a means of providing and receiving input.
I like the relaxed and easy atmosphere that allows me to share what’s going on, ask questions, get quick and thoughtful responses, as well as see the kinds of things that are currently getting people excited, bothered, or happy. It’s like being tuned into a barometer of human nature.
It’s always fun to see what other people’s random thoughts are, in addition to how they live their daily lives. I guess my main reason for using Twitter is simply because it’s great meeting other people, and Twitter happens to be one of the best mediums for meeting people, and getting to know them on a level more personal than blogging, or even emailing.
I find Twitter very useful to gauge what people are thinking about; I also use it as somewhat of a real-time diary or even a work log, making a note when I’ve completed something, or sending a tweet when I leave for someplace and tweeting again when I arrive to see how long it took to get there, which is very useful in these weeks following my recent move—I know how to shuffle my schedule around to accommodate the new traveling times.
It sure is more than talking about your cat; I talk about my dog, too!
More seriously: I do NOT use it for anything I want to be sure somebody will see, because I assume that they might be using it the way I do: I look at it, but I make no attempt to see every tweet from everyone I follow. If I’m off it for 24 hours, I left the room for that time, and I missed the conversation. I do try to go check for @ replies to me that I missed, but I don’t always see them all.
I use it to get some human contact during the day, to see what people are chatting about, to throw out questions that the smart people I follow might have some answers to or interesting thoughts about, that kind of thing. Sort of chat room / focus group / place to yell for help / place to sound off all at once.
Interesting idea to use Twitter at the office. I had not thought about this until you mentioned it, but like you I could see some improvement in corporate communications using a system like Twitter.
More than anything, I’m making connections and developing my relationships. You can’t talk to everyone at the same time or spend all day emailing and replying to emails. With twitter, I can grow my relationship with people on a daily basis without necessarily interrupting my own workflow or the other person’s work flow. I think it’s one of the most fabulous ways to develop a relationship online with the minimum amount of interruptions.
i’m not using it at ALL right now and hope it is back soon.
i use it to check in with friends and see what everyone is up to; i follow threads and interesting people (how i got here!).
great for on the fly meetups, getting a quick answer from a huge pool of people.
As a student, I use Twitter as a research library and a sounding board. It is my own personal wikipedia, jstor and google rolled into one!
As a young professional, Twitter has been an amazing source of advice, guidance, encouragement and support.
As a human being, I have found and developed some of my closest (real-time) friendships on Twitter. I have met incredible people who have made me laugh, enlightened me, showed concern and empathy when I’ve been down and overall, have greatly added to my life.
For me, joining Twitter was a life changing event. I know that sounds kinda ridiculous but it is true. My life has been richer, more fulfilling and far more passionate ever since I walked into Professor Quigley’s class, met Amanda Gravel and was convinced that Twitter was not stalkerish.
Time stamps on our general activities, Twitter, commenting on blogs, etc…render us highly stalk-able, uh, I mean track-able.
Why do you think I have so few tweets? I prefer to keep my whereabouts and activities somewhat close to the vest.
Aren’t you negating your inbox zero boundaries by using Twitter to micromanage your e-mail in that example?
Don Lafferty: sometimes I choose to tweet, sometimes I choose not to tweet. I guess Twitter can be your personal spin doctor.
Chris: two major uses of Twitter are (1) to find out about breaking news (for example, I learned of Charlton Heston’s death on Twitter) and (2) for technical support.
Also, as I noted earlier (via Twitter, of course), if you really want to detect someone’s presence, their FriendFeed account (or other lifestream aggregator) might be a better tool. Sometimes I’m tweeting, sometimes I’m publishing in other ways.
I’m still really testing the waters. I need to find out the better services out there for Twitter.
But what I use it right now is for a dual-flow. One being *spark* information that will get an idea or conversation going based on something totally irrelevant.
The other way is *gossip* really. Keeping up with what the people I follow are doing.
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[...] group for CTIA last month for the show in Las Vegas in what Chris Brogan would call “using twitter as presence.” I had only used Twitter at SXSW, but even without a Twitter following of my own, within a [...]
[...] group for CTIA last month for the show in Las Vegas in what Chris Brogan would call “using twitter as presence.” I had only used Twitter at SXSW, but even without a Twitter following of my own, within a [...]
A good reply to those who wondered a while back, “why would anyone want to know what someone else is doing?”